Philip Roth has written an open letter to Wikipedia after the collaborative online encyclopaedia refused to accept him as a credible source for the inspiration behind his own novel, The Human Stain.

The novel, about the New England professor Coleman Silk who is chased out of his job following accusations of racism, was described on Wikipedia as being "allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard". Roth, however, says this is not the case, and that it was actually inspired by something that happened to his friend Melvin Tumin, a Princeton professor who spoke the very words used by Silk in The Human Stain about two African American students: "Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?"

In a detailed open letter published by the New Yorker, Roth reveals that he petitioned Wikipedia to delete the "misstatement", but was told "that I, Roth, was not a credible source: 'I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,' writes the Wikipedia Administrator – 'but we require secondary sources.'"

Roth says the belief that The Human Stain was inspired by Broyard "entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip – there is no truth in it at all", and that "after failing to get a change made through the usual channels", he decided to write an open letter to Wikipedia because he didn't know how else to proceed. His 2,000-plus word explanation has obviously convinced moderators on the site: it now credits the novel's inspiration to Tumin, and even mentions Roth's open letter.

Blake Bailey, who has just been appointed as Roth's new biographer, will be taking notes – it doesn't do to get the facts wrong about the Pulitzer-winning author, who earlier this year faxed the editors of The Atlantic over an essay's assertion that he suffered "a 'crack-up' in his mid-50s".

"The statement is not true nor is there reliable biographical evidence to support it," wrote Roth at the time. "After knee surgery in March 1987, when I was 54, I was prescribed the sleeping pill Halcion, a sedative hypnotic in the benzodiazepine class of medications that can induce a debilitating cluster of adverse effects … My own adverse reaction to Halcion … started when I began taking the drug and resolved promptly when, with the helpful intervention of my family doctor, I stopped."

Bailey told the New York Times last week that he had just signed a collaboration agreement giving him unlimited access to Roth's archives, as well as access to his friends and interviews with the author himself. Already the author of biographies of John Cheever and Richard Yates, Bailey expects the Roth project to take eight to 10 years.

The biographer told the New York Times that there had been a "lengthy vetting process" to secure Roth's agreement – Ross Miller's previously planned biography of the author was, he explained, dropped in 2009 – with Roth asking what qualified a gentile from Oklahoma to write his biography. "I pointed out that I'm not an ageing bisexual alcoholic with an ancient Puritan lineage and I still managed to write a biography of John Cheever," he said.